"She wasn't sad anymore,

she was numb,

and numb,

she knew,

was somehow worse."

-Atticus

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It all started with rooftops.

'Go take a swan dive off the roof. Maybe you'll get a quirk in your next life.'

'It's good to have dreams, however, you must be rational. Fighting villains with quirks while being quirk-less...'

So he decided he should end it with them as well.

Who knows, kaccha-, no, Katsuki might be right. His dream was the reason he had managed to last this long through all of the bullying. He was on a tightrope that was slowly but surely breaking; his mother, his childhood friend, his classmates, no-one believed that he could do it. Even All Might... Even he said it was impossible. The same man who said that anyone could be a hero. (Did he not even count as a person?)

Deku's mouth rose into a bitter, self-mocking, contemptuous smile.

'You liar.'

He threw open the door, feet marching in line to the roof. Everyone had already left the building, going home for the day; the sun was burning on the edge of the horizon, minutes away from dipping underneath it. It was pretty. A sky of molten gold alongside slight splatters of cherry pink, with a swirl of magenta here and there. He didn't plan for it, simply picking a random day of the month on a whim, but it was a beautiful day to die.

He scoffed to himself.

It was more than he deserved.

Nevertheless, there was something magnetic about the sight of the setting sun. He flippantly walked toward the edge of the building, fingers intertwining with the bare wire fence. Slowly, he stared down at the ground, a sudden feeling of nausea exploding in his stomach.

"Should I really do this..? What if it gets better..? What if-... Fuck." He threaded his fingers into the fence's holes, digging his hands into the metal as if to habitually wake himself up via pain (it had always worked, after all). "What am I even doing..? I already decided that... that it wasn't worth it anymore, yet... Yeah. Why am I being so stupid? This is the best way."

His lip trembled in revulsion, not from the drop to the ground, but because of himself. The whole situation was ridiculous; he knew what he was getting into, exactly what he was doing. It wasn't just an irrational decision inspired by a freak bout of negativity. It was planned. Calculated.

It was his ticket out of this hopeless reality. (Why wouldn't his heart stop beating so frantically?)

But he... He was getting scared by it-?!!

"Damn it all..!"

His fingers, which had gradually slithered in the fence's wire-y holes, clamped down. Metal bent and warped, sawing through his flesh like a cheese grater to cheese. It was only when a drop of blood fell down to his wrist, however, that he noticed what he had done. He was jolted awake in the blink of an eye. He slowly pried his fingers out of the hole, wincing slightly at how big it was. He didn't mean to damage the infrastructure. He was already a bother when he was just breathing, but then he had to go and tear a hole in the fence?! It was already going to be a big inconvenience when they found his body, and he had to go and do this too-...

'I need to calm down... I already broke the fence, and I can't do anything about it now, so I can just... leave some money around? Yeah, that should be fine... Except, I don't have any money... What about the fence then? I can't just leave the hole there...'

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Crash.

"Where did the ball go..? Seriously! How hard did you hit that! I don't see it anywhere..."

He felt his tense frame relax at the realization that it was just a ball.

The other boy sheepishly laughed - he looked like a little ant, so far below - and scratched his head.

"Sorry, sorry. I didn't mean to hit it that hard... Wanna just get another one..? I really can't find it."

"Ehhhh. Coach is gonna kill us though-..."

The sounds of mundane - happy - conversation (not that he could hear it in the first place, so far up and up and up) died out as the teenagers moved elsewhere. It was the kind of thing he would have wished to have, once upon a time. Friendship. He had long given up on it as the years went on, though; being quirkless made friendship unachievable. It made pretty much everything unachievable, if he was to be honest.

Even the things he wanted to do most-...

A sudden gust of wind blew past, carrying some red-tinged leaves alongside it. It wasn't a strong gust of wind, nothing near the force required to forcefully blow a human down, but Izuku's body crashed down to the ground regardless (the palethinlikebone of his body was also a factor). He just laid there for a few seconds, deaf to the world around him and the residual aches from his fall. Listlessly, he curled into himself on the cold, hard floor.

(Just like his feelings and emotions, he too crashed. But despite his physical body surviving the fall, it was unlikely that his spirit would.)

"Ouch. I didn't really think that through. But... The falling part wasn't as bad as I've imagined."

He let his limbs uncurl themselves until he laid in a starfish position on the cemented roof. His previous anger and fear had all but dissipated with an ever-familiar feeling of numbness taking its place. It was like he was drowning, suffocating on the world itself. It was a feeling that came and went, but when it did appear... It was debilitating. His darkest moments were not when he limped home with enough bruises that they might as well have been his skin itself, or when he was left to stew in the water fountain (nor was it when everything just felt so overwhelming, so much so that he cut-), but these moments of complete and utter hopelessness.

(It was starting to wrap around his thoughts and feelings with increasing regularity, and that terrified him. He'd do whatever he could to escape from it, including death. What was the point in living if you were like this? To be dead while you were alive? At least, with this...)

Slowly, he drew his battered limbs upwards and stood up. He approached the fence once more and looked downwards. He couldn't feel anything in particular. Grasping around for his notebook, he held it with surprisingly gentle hands. It was torn, burnt, and bent in places as well as scribbled over, but it was almost everything to him. He couldn't help but be careful with it.

Notebook in hand, he flipped over the fence, crouching on the tiny ledge of the roof. He placed his notebook down, and slowly began to untie his shoes, fingers digging into the already red fabric (growing even redder with the blood of his fingertips) and tugged it loose and off his foot, gently laying them beside him. He smiled, a little, at the outrageous red that they were, similar in nature to a fire hydrant. In fact, his mother was the one who decided on them when he was doubtful, and-

"...Aren't these a bit too red?"

His mother turned toward him and pouted. It was a look that a grown woman in her forties shouldn't be able to pull off, but his mother had always been... special. In a good way, of course. She had a tendency to cry, and pout, and sulk, but he wouldn't trade it for the world. It meant she cared, after all. (She also smiled like she had the sun itself trapped in her lips. It was... warm. Her warmth had kept him from drowning in himself many times. He was grateful to her. He wondered when it wouldn't be enough to keep him afloat.)

"Izuku, you don't like them? I thought they would look so good on you too..."

He denied it.

"No, no, I like it! I promise!"

"That's good~!"

He took another glance at the red shoes. Now that he was looking at them again, they didn't look that bad...

-he really liked them now. Wore them every day, in fact.

Thwack.

He turned his head, just in time to see his notebook plummet to the ground. He automatically tried to reach down and catch it, but it fluttered mischievously out of his fingers, caressing his fingertips as a lover would, before ultimately fleeing just out of his grasp. The wind took it far, far away into the distance. The bindings came loose, and a flock of paper soared out, gliding along with the wind.

(A drop of water slid down his cheek, and he absentmindedly wondered if it was about to rain.)

He could only stare blankly for a while, watching helplessly as the last of his notes soared off into the distance (and crashed to the ground like a baby bird that couldn't figure out how to fly). The aching chasm of nothingness in his chest expanded and expanded until not even the sentimental thoughts of his mother could keep him above water. A glance at red shoes didn't even make him flinch.

So he sunk.

Mechanically, he continued to take off his shoe, laying them both now on the chilled cement beside him. He stood up.

There was naught but a few inches between him and death, and he had never felt so at peace.

'I'm sorry that I'm leaving like this, mom. But surely you'll see - just like everybody else - that life is much better without me in it. You won't have to worry about the bills anymore or stress about the money in your purse. You'll forget all about me, and find happiness. Maybe even get remarried to a good guy that can no longer be bothered by the fact that your son is quirkless. Or maybe not. Just be happy, okay? ...Goodbye, mom.'

Without fanfare, he took a step forward...

and plummeted to the ground.